Lifeless Love
by assonance-asphyxiation
Summary: One-shot. Not even time, absence or distance can change the way they feel about each other. ExB


A.N: I tried my hand at angst. The vagueness is intende. Pass or fail? You decide. Let me know in a review.

assonance-asphyxiation

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**Lifeless Love.**

Not a day goes by, where I don't think of him. He consumes every thought of mine. Every action is undertaken, with him in mind. Each tear shed, is in his name. Seven years have passed, yet, the pain is raw and as stifling as that very day. Seven years ago.

But life continues. The Earth still spins on its axis. People live. People die.

But my heart still twists in pain. I wonder if I'll ever be able to be happy again. Or perhaps, his absence has taken away my ability to love and live life to its fullest. What I would do to gain my love back. Anything. Everything. Often I wonder, can one even fall so hard, so fast for someone at such a young age? Maybe this is a convoluted illusion that my foolish heart has believed in. Or it may just be the sheer, ripping agony of love. Yes, that must be it.

Time and again, I visit the dense expanse of forestry near my house. On the fringes of the city, my isolated home resides with a tinge of loneliness. In its solitary glory, it is intertwined with tall, dark, looming trees that sway morosely. The sun hardly shines here, only making an annual appearance for a few hours. That day, I don't leave my room. It is a time to grieve. Not to rejoice.

There is a large, smooth and round rock that sits stoically in the centre of a clearing. It is softened with a few errant patches of thick moss. Occasionally, the moss turns yellow and rots away. In a sick sense, it pleases me. My insides aren't the only ones putrefacting. The canopy of leaves creates a shelter from above. The thick, humid air helps my chest stick together and I don't have to worry about the gaping hole in my heart. I breathe in deeply, and the action doesn't make me cry.

Due to the frequency of my visits and naps in the clearing, a bed of soft soil and leaves have been formed where I lie. Animals tend to avoid the area in my presence and it placates me. I lie emotionlessly, eyes closed, free of any feeling in the world. Usually, a whisper of a sound would echo amongst the rustling noises of the forest. I preferred to believe it was a free flying bird, rather than a intruder. Company loathes me, as I hate it. Live alone, or don't live at all, my cynical mind always calls silently to all the happy families and couples. But I can't help who I've become. Someone selfish.

High school, university and the real world floated by me in a haze. Time ceased to exist and I lived each day as it came. My classmates kept away in school, knowing that I wasn't one to be consoled with. I sat within a few people, but it was only to deceive myself into thinking that I wasn't a recluse. But, oh, I was so much more worse.

University brought with it enquiring personalities and prying eyes. They wanted to know why I was under a constant cloud of apathy or melancholy. Some came with the intent of fixing me. How could they fix me, when they were not _him? _Where was the hope, when there was no _him? _It was impossible, and my slient, grave expression gave it away.

Work was marginally better. I worked privately and only came into contact with others once a week. They acknowledged my disposition and let me be. I appreciated that.

Through the years, there were some, that remained loyal to me. It was those who knew me from the very beginning of my existence. We knew each other from kindergarten or elementary school. They knew the real me. Not the woman a shell of the girl she used to be. They comforted when others pitied. They helped while others gossiped.

Alice Whitlock shook my shoulder lightly, bringing me out of my reverie. With a heartbreaking smile, she looked into my eyes. She didn't need to ask what I was thinking; she already knew. Stroking my hair softly, she murmured insignificant things that I did not understand, but I leaned into her touch anyway.

Jasper Whitlock, her husband, clapsed a hand on my shoulder and smiled calmly. It was forced, but he tried nonetheless. He had an odd ability to sense others' emotions. He tended to visit rarely and I understood why. My miserable mood became too much to handle more than once a month. His demeanour indicated that my despondency was contagious. But if he could _be me _then I wonder if he'd survive for longer than an hour.

Emmett McCarty pushed away the couple and placed a large, bear-like hand upon mine. His dimply smile resonated his euphoria and childlike mind as he held my eyes and tried to communicate the good mood I didn't have. With a desperate twitch of my lips, I nodded and looked away. Emmett was difficult to be around for long periods of time, but I didn't love him any less.

Rosalie Hale, his girlfriend, struck him on his head and demanded that he moved. He shifted a little to allow his stunning woman to walk towards me, encircling me in a tentative hug. With every muscle in my defeated body, I lifted my arms to embrace her. The utter exhaustion I felt, caused me to recede into my couch and let out a long breath. I simply couldn't keep up with life.

"We came over to see how you were doing." Alice whispered mutely.

I nodded slowly, the hollow words escaping me, "I'm fine, guys. Really."

Jasper and Alice were not convinced. I didn't expect them to be. Rosalie and Emmett nodded. They were trying to grip the ends of a thread that was fast running out. It hurt me to see them like this, but what could I do? All the exuberance was drained from me nearly a decade ago.

There was a communal silence, as everyone walked me indoors from my spot in the forest, and settled into the couches in my impersonal house. We turned to stare at the plasma screen in the corner of my living room. A woman sobbed helplessly, her body hunched over a breakfast table. A man ran his hands though her hair in a somber attempt to provide her solace. His efforts were futile; she continued to shed tears relentlessly.

Suddenly, Rosalie leapt off her sofa and snagged the remote control from the coffee table and zapped the television into standby mode. Standing in the centre of the room with purpose, she eyed the other three meaningfully. I watched her eyes trail over each form slowly, occasionally raising an eyebrow, as if to challenge them.

Jasper looked pained. As if a knife had been slowly dragged through his chest, and this panicked me. I reached out to squeeze his arm and the blonde man gasped. Looking on in incredulousy, Alice, Emmett and Rosalie remained slient. It felt strange - surreal - to be comforting someone else. The feelings were alien. But there was a small part of me that was satisfied, that I could finally offer something that I had only received - never given.

His face relaxed slightly but Alice's visage remained forlorn. Biting her lip, she cast furtive glances at Rosalie, who remained undeterred. Once the blonde woman was set on something, she'd do it. Tenacity was her talent. Emmett, who knew his girlfriend, was unsurprised and gave his permission with his silence and resigned face.

"Bella." She finally spoke in a clear voice, "We came here to talk to you about something."

I always knew this moment would come. One day or another, my friends would realise that they'd had enough of my despair. My unresponsive body, their one-sided conversations and my pathetic reasonings to be excused of worldy affairs would finally take a toll on them. They, too, had also been afftected, yet they seemed to live on. Learning from the past and letting bygones be bygones. Why couldn't I do that? Why was my body, mind and soul stuck in a place so irrevocable?

They'd tolerated more than their fair share. I was indebted to them for their friendship, empathy and company - as much of it as I had permitted. If they chose to walk away, I'd let them go with good grace. In my heart, they'd always be my comrades - until the very end of my sullen life.

"I understand. I have no hard feelings." I breathed softly.

Speaking loudly had been a thing of my past. After that evening, after all the yelling, screaming and crying, my voice had reached saturation. I couldn't speak louder than a murmur. My vocal chords had even adapted to the volume of my voice. I had cried and wailed for my _him, _for so long, that I forgot the dynamic of time.

Emmett sat up straighter in my reclining chair and looked at me, confused. He scratched his head and his orbs flickered to Rosalie, who also had a frown on her lovely forehead.

"What are you talking about?" Jasper asked carefully.

"You...you would like to cut off ties with me, and I don't mind. Not one bit. I understand that I have been so very selfish, and I apologise for that; from the bottom of my heart." I mumbled.

Alice's pixie-like features morphed into anger, as her eyebrows furrowed deeply. Coiling around Jasper, she glared at me. I gasped. She hadn't glared at me like that since high-school. The memory was so vivid, that it shocked me. It felt as if I was transported back seven years. Back when _he... _

"We are most certainly not leaving you, Bella Swan. You'll have to fight to get rid of us. Our allegiance to you is in the good times, and the bad." She said sharply.

The guilt seeped in. I had considered my friends so shallow and unsupportive. I failed to see the depth of love they held for me. If I could only love them back with such vigour. My heart was already charred, burnt into the fiery pits of nothing. Only ash, swirling around my lifeless form.

"I'm sorry." I apologised.

A soft tear rolled down Alice's cheek. The one, lone tear tugged at my conscience so hard, that I reached forward to hug her tightly to myself. I could not see her so unhappy. She was the jumpy, happy, lively woman that was my best friend and the sister I'd always longed for. She needed all the elation I lacked.

Rosalie joined in the hug and kissed my head, smilling sadly at me. The grief in her eyes was too much to bear, until I realised that it was my own melancholy reflected in her eyes. I swallowed back the tears and threw myself in the embrace again. I couldn't break down with an audience.

"Actually, we came here to tell you about a letter I was sent." She said in an undertone.

"What?" I croaked.

Emmett cleared his throat and awkwardly began, "Bella. The letter was a suicide note. It was sent by someone we all know."

I turned to face him - with Alice under my arm - and stared at him with hundreds of questions in my eyes. I did not fathom why he would tell me such a thing. Was he trying to give me ideas - ideas that I already had? No, Emmett would never do such a thing. Never.

My silence probed him to speak on, "Honey, it was from Edward."

I blinked.

And then all the breath within me exited with a staggering pant. The room began to spin violently as I clutched onto Alice for life. I couldn't feel her beside me. The feeling in my extremities had vanished and I toppled back onto the sofa. No, there was no way, that Ed-ward could be...no, I couldn't even think of it. This world couldn't function without his presence. He had no right to do something so...blasphemous.

I could hear the others shouting and grabbing at me, but their voices were muted and their movements blurred. I could only see one thing clearly, and that was him. Edward. His erratic bronze hair, as the wind ran its hands through it. How the golden undertones would shine through on a sunny day. How his emerald green eyes would melt into hypnotic liquid when he was happy. How his long, slender fingers would curve around my own.

The memory caused my heart to writhe with agony. I was ripping open all my wounds callously, even the ones that had only just scabbed. Every breath was laboured, as I struggled to keep up with the anguish pouring out of my once-dormant heart, which now thumped wildly in my chest, like a galloping horse.

A horse reaching its death.

"Give me the note!" I gasped from under my asphyxiation.

"Are you sure?!" Jasper confirmed in panic.

"Jasper, give it to me _now!" _I demanded.

A letter was thrust at me, soft and silky in texture. The words were written haphazardly everywhere on the page and a small black heart with a crack through it was drawn at the top. A whiff of his scent even emerged from the paper and I thought that I would die right there. But I had to keep going, not for long, but just for now.

_Rosalie,_

_I love Bella. I always did, always have and always will. Time and absence will not change the magnitude of my feelings for the one woman who has touched my heart, and taken it away. Never doubt the intensity of my love, because it was the only thing kept me alive for as long as it did. I love her. I love her. I love her. I love her. I love Bella. _

_From the depths of my soul, I apologise to you, Emmett, Alice and Jasper. I know that you care of my life and it must not have been easy on you. But thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you._

_I am a big fool. A silly moron. I threw away my life, because I was afraid. Scared. Scared. Scared. Scared. Of what? Of love. Love. Love. I left her, alone, heartbroken and depressed. I saw it in her eyes. I saw it in mine. I felt just like her. Sick. Sick. Sick. There was no reason in living a life where Bella didn't exist. I tried to live. I tried to return. I tried to reconcile. Tried. Tried. Tried. _

_I came back. To see her. In her brown-eyed, brown-haired beauty. She was there. But incomplete. And I made her that way. It was me! It is me who takes her death on my account. I murdered her. I murdered myself. Bella will live in heaven. I hope. I shall burn in hell. But I deserve it. I destroyed my life and her's too. She lay there lifeless. In that forest. That forest. That forest. _

_I love her, Rosalie. Only her. Only her._

_Live long. Live happy. Live love._

_Edward. Cullen._

The sobs wracked through me. The pain was excruciating and I almost died, reading the short, clipped sentences. They were written in blotched pen, all over the flawless paper. His name was one elongated swirl and the desolancy and torment rang clearly in each word. The way he blamed my death - the death that did not happen - on himself. I could imagine him, bent over the note, writing whatever came into his broken mind. His mind was in as many pieces as mine was.

And now, he was no longer here.

A paroxysm rippled through my body, and I cried out with the sheer pain. Thick salty drops clouded my vision and my voice broke through the carefully constructed walls I had built around it. Screeching with agony, I wailed to the God above. Why? Why did we end with a fate such as this? _What _did we do to deserve this? Which heinous crime did we commit?

Love.

That's what we fell into. Love. It was not a blissful emotion. There was no satisfaction of being in love. The commercialised word was overused. Because this searing, gut wrenching heartache that had taken up permanent residence inside my resentful body, was love. It afflicted every fibre of mine. And now I was useless. An invalid. Lusting for death.

Ignoring the four stunned adults in my house, I sprinted blindly through the trees, along the pebbled trail to my clearing. To _our_ clearing. This is where we fell into the wretched trap of love. And this is where Edward left me, with claims that this eternal connection we felt was no more. This would be the exact place, where I'd give myself away to the God above. Edward. It didn't hurt to say his name anymore, knowing that I'd be near him soon. Edward worried about my life, wanting me to live a varied, fruitful life. I hope he saw that my life was meaningless without his.

As I tore through the shrubs, I thought back to those feathery sounds that echoed while I gave myself away to the numbness. My feet sunk into the fresh, moist Earth and forgot everything but Edward and I. He was so close. Only a few feet away while I floated on the cloud of apathy. My bronze haired boy must have thought that I was dead. In reality, I was. My heart was dead. It had been, for seven years.

I reached the centre of the meadow, where my - our - rock sat. I looked up from my death-induced haze and gasped.

Someone was sitting on our rock.

Staggering forward, unsure whether I was in a sick dream that gave not only images, but emotions too, I reached my trembling hand out to the figure. My breath came out jagged, and each inhalation burned the very lining of my lungs. The obnoxious panting reiterated against the deep brown barks of the somber trees.

The figure was shaking. Small gasps and sobs eliciting from its mouth every so often. I needed to tell him to move. I could not give into submission with an onlooker. My private affairs needed to be just that - private. I did not want to prolong the devastating apocalyptic feeling in my blood either.

The figure - he - looked up.

I almost collapsed, looking at his eyes. Those very eyes of my...Edward.

Green, jade green. Flat without life, but nonetheless, an exact copy of the emerald orbs that I had once gazed into, and fallen in love with. Rimmed with red flesh and tarnished with deep purple circles that contrasted hauntingly with his pale palour, his eyes remained locked with mine.

His hair, too. It still retained the strange colour of bronze. Neither red nor brown, it was an unusual, and beautifully unique colour of auburn. Although matted with grease, and wildly erratic, I knew at once, that this was my Edward's hair. I sighed deeply, and it didn't ache my throat as much as it did previously. The feeling of a fire burning in my stomach had reduced to a low grilling.

I needed to finish up quickly. This hallucination was taking up shockingly realistic properties, and even ascended from our rock, to approach me. How long could I let myself live with an illusion of my death roaming around me? I opened my mouth to speak, only to realise that I was bawling out every teardrop my poor excuse of a body held. I tried to smother my tears, but to no avail. These teardrops wouldn't cease until I left this world for another.

But my delusion seemed to be more composed than I. Despite his sallow skin, chapped lips and unhealthy lankiness, he did not belt out with thick, fat and angry tears. Advancing slowly, he reached out his hand to graze against my bare arm. The disbelief in his stoney eyes was unmistakeable. It was as if he thought I was a dream. If only.

"B-Bella?" His feathery voice asked in a stunned utterance.

I blinked rapidly. Each time my eyelids hit my eyes, a rock was crushed in between them. The jarring pain lashed at my vision. Was...was...Edward still alive? My heart thrashed against my chest in the sheer prospect.

"Edward? How...how?" I questioned incoherently, stupefied.

"Are you real?" His asked quietly, squeezing his eyes shut. Preparing himself for either answer.

"As real as a shattered heart." I mumbled. My voice was gravelly due to the aftermath of my flood of tears. His eyes fluttered open.

And in that instant, his bony arm crushed me to him. Every single pain, each moment of agony and every gasp of torture dissipated, as our broken souls reunited as one. His soft, manly smell assaulted my senses, filling me up with the woodsy scent of honey, lilac and musk. My heart belted like a galloping race horse. It thumped with such vigour, that it very nearly exploded inside my chest. My throat clogged with emotion, tears and mucus. Eyes that hurt ferociously, were blinded by moisture. Tears of relief. Tears of skepticism. Tears of victory.

"Edward. Edward. Edward." I chanted against his torso.

"My sweet, innocent, loving Bella." He whispered into my hair, refusing to let me go. How could he? We were incomplete, useless without one another.

"I thought...you...died." I gasped through my whimpers.

"I was so very close. I wanted to die where I thought...you died. It was as close as I could get to you." He explained in a distant tone.

I pulled back to see his face again. Lifting a hand, I traced the flat plane of his forehead, the deep set of his eyebrows and down his straight nose. I moved to the high set of his cheekbones, down to his full lips and the masculine shape of his hard jaw. He was real. And he was here.

Edward left soft feathery touches on my own face, memorizing each contour along my skin. His hands caressed my lips, dancing around the outline. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, a ghost of a smile gracing his glorious face. As haggard as it was, his beauty was still clearly evident.

He snapped open his eyes and locked my gaze with his. The smothering, smouldering look caused my heart to beat in a way I thought I could never experience again. Crystal green orbs darkened with desire. A desire to confirm my presence. I too, needed to make sure that he was really here, and really alive - and that this wasn't just a dissonant joke my disturbed mind was playing.

And then his lips were on mine. Soft, silky touches set my body on fire and even heaven couldn't rival with the sensation. Our lips moved in synchronisation, molding around one another. My hands shot to his hair and flew ferally through the auburn mop on his head. Edward's long, slender fingers intertwined in my hair, clutching my face to his. I could taste his cool, minty lips as they sent a shiver down my spine. Even hallucinations, or dying wouldn't have given me the ecstacy that Edward's kisses provided.

He licked my lower lip and I opened my mouth to grant him permission. Our tongues battled violently as the kiss turned from sweet to searing. Edward pulled my body impossibly closer and moaned enticingly into my mouth. Just the sound of his satisfaction sent a thrill down my rejuvenated body.

We pulled apart, our ragged breaths the only sound echoing in the deep forest. Gazing up at him, I saw all the love, tenderness and repentance that I needed to see. I never once doubted his love for me. Our bond was too strong to be broken by anything superficial. Edward only left me, to let me experience everything in life, so I wouldn't feel tied down to him. We were a case of mutually assured destruction.

"I am sorry; so sorry to cause you enough pain for three lifetimes. I only left to let you have a better life." Edward whispered into my hair, as he tucked me safely under his chin.

"Edward, don't you understand? I am nothing without you." I susurrated.

"I do now, love. Because there is no meaning to this world without _you _in it." He replied.

He felt just how I did. The intensity of our connection was unparalleled.

"Will you take me back, even after all the agony I've put you in?" He asked softly, with liquid eyes.

I reached up to press my lips to his. "Always."

"Always." He repeated, truimph evident in his tone.

It was true. Not even death could keep us apart. We were meant to be.


End file.
